I’ve been waxing nostalgic these past few weeks as Mitchell’s basketball program has returned to glory. When I came to Mitchell in 1982 to teach Social Studies at the high school, the last time Mitchell had won a State Championship was in 1964 under head coach Bob Brooks. By 1982, Bob Brooks was no longer the coach but instead was the high school principal and Gary Munsen was the Head Boys’ Basketball Coach.
In school year 1982-83 the boys ended up as consolation champions in third place. Pierre was the state champion that year. The next school year, 1983-84, Mitchell was in the finals but lost to Sioux Falls Washington. That began a series of years where it seemed like it was Mitchell vs. Sioux Falls Washington in the finals perennially. Mitchell’s first championship run since ’64 took place the next year with Mitchell crowned as State Champions in 1985, then the Kernels repeated in 1986 and again in 1987. That 1985 team included Shawn Haley, Jason DeLange, Bart Frederick, Chad Anderson and Dean Jacobsen. Cheryl Myers, an English teacher at the high school, irritated me with her description of a student that year. She said, “I have just the cutest little boy in class.” We were a 10-12 high school at the time, nearly everyone was 16 or older and most were already at their full adult height, so I thought “… little boy”, what an inappropriate and inaccurate description! So, I annoyingly replied, “Who’s the little boy!?!” She answered, “Bart Frederick”. Now I don’t really know Bart’s vital statistics, but he was something like 6’8” tall and weighed around 220 or so. He was many things; kind, considerate, quiet, a good student, thoughtful, a fierce competitor, a team leader BUT – a little boy, he was not!
Gary Munsen continued his run of success adding championships in 1990, 1991, 1994, 1996, 1997 and in 2005. The boys haven’t won a state championship since the Munsen years. It used to be that the girls’ season and boys’ seasons of basketball took place at different times of the year. For a while, Munsen coached both the girls and the boys. Girls’ basketball hadn’t had much success, at least in tournament play, until Gary took over. He led the girls to state titles in 1990, 1992 and 1994. Succeeding coaches, Deb Thill in 2003 and Wes Morgan in 2012 added girls’ state titles.
I was excited to see the Mitchell girls back in the state tournament. They’ve had such a successful year; I was hoping for another state championship title. I wanted that for the girls for several reasons. First, I was an active Kernel for a long time (nearly 40 years) and you can retire the teacher from the school but you can’t take the Kernel out of him. Second, I’m always an advocate and a rooting fan for kids in all of their various endeavors.
Third, a state title this year would have been historic because Dave Brooks is the head coach. It would have been wonderful to have a father-son state championship coach combination; Bob Brooks, Dave’s dad, state boys’ champion coach in 1964 and, sixty years later, Dave as the girls’ state champion coach this year. Alas, it wasn’t to be. As the Minnesota Vikings say, “There’s always next year.”
We have open enrollment now, so kids can go to whatever high school they want to. As a general rule, students open enroll to Mitchell High School for the academic programs – Physics, Chemistry, Calculus etc. Mitchell kids tend to open enroll to smaller schools for their athletic programs. For example, the hypothetical number nine kid on the Mitchell basketball squad thinks he would be a stud starter in a smaller town so they open enroll there, that kind of thing.
Before open enrollment, Gary Munsen was a master at recruiting. Now, recruiting was “illegal” under the South Dakota Activities Association rules, but Munsen found a way. He persuaded families, or at least parts of families, to move to Mitchell to make their boys who were as tall as sequoias and just as sturdy eligible for the basketball team. He found people in town who were related (an uncle or an aunt or grandparent) to some pre-NBA prospect and get that ball player to move to Mitchell to live with their relative and play for the Kernels. Of course there were home grown products as well, the most famous being Mike Miller who was a part of those championship years in the mid-nineties.
Kids at the high school would ask me, back when I was teaching, if I was going to go to State A’s (as we called it then). I always answered, “No” and they would ask me why? It’s because I couldn’t go as just a person. I was a teacher and would have that role at the tournament even though I was there as a spectator in an unofficial capacity. That meant if I saw any drinking or other types of shenanigans, I would have to report it or intervene. When you’re a teacher, you’re always “on duty” no matter where you are. I wanted to go as a just another fan in the stands not as a sheriff, so I never went.
We used to get State A’s off from school, but only for the boys’ tournament. In a way, that made sense since the boys “always” qualified and the girls “never” did. That’s a bit of an exaggeration but not much of one. I always advocated for a flexible calendar. My proposal was to schedule both boys’ and girls’ state tournaments as days off from school but only take the time off if one, or both, of the teams qualified for state. Otherwise, we’d have school those days. That might mean some years there were no days off at state tournament time and in other years, like this one, days off during both the boys’ and girls’ tournaments. That suggestion rated a few smiles and raised eyebrows but never went anywhere.
One year, under Coach Munsen, the boys did not qualify for the State Tournament and angry people wanted to sue the school district. It was the practice of Kernel fans to make their State A reservations for the next year, immediately after this year’s tournament concluded because the thinking was, of course, the Kernels would be in the tournament again the following year. The year the boys didn’t make it, many people lost non-refundable deposits on motel rooms since they weren’t going to take time off and a long weekend to go out to Rapid City to not see the Kernels play. So, some tried to bring suit against the school to recoup their financial losses. Sympathetic lawyers all over town heard the outrage and then gently advised there was no case.
Once the girls started to make the tournament, the school district began the practice of taking off school every other year – this year for the boys’ tournament and then next year for the girls’ tournament and so forth and so on. It used to be whichever team played in Rapid City as the tournament site got the days off from school under the perfectly logical reasoning that fans could drive back and forth to Sioux Falls when the tournament was there but not so when we played in Rapid City.
It’s been a long drought for the boys’ program. Their last state championship was back in 2005, nearly two decades ago. The boys play in game one of this year’s South Dakota High School Activities Association state basketball tournament. The Kernels face off against the Cavaliers of Sioux Falls Jefferson at noon on Thursday, March 14th in Sioux Falls. Ryker Kreutzfeldt and the rest of the coaching staff have done a great job with dedicated, talented, committed student athletes and have had a wonderful year. The Kernels are the #1 seed with a record of 20-1 (that one loss was in over time) and deserve fan support.
I’ll see you at the games.